


Eighteen Forever

by gothsebastian



Category: Nancy Drew (Video Games), Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys Super Mysteries - Franklin W. Dixon & Carolyn Keene
Genre: Multi, Nancy is vampire, That’s pretty much it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-09 02:24:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17398211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gothsebastian/pseuds/gothsebastian
Summary: Nancy Drew was just an average world-travelling teenage detective.She should know — she had been eighteen for eighty-nine years.





	Eighteen Forever

Nancy Drew was just an average world-travelling teenage detective.   
  
She should know — she had been eighteen for eighty-nine years.   
  
Nancy's early life hadn't quite been normal — she was born into wealth and had lost her mother at the age of ten. Still, nothing in her childhood had ever been so extravagant that Nancy would have considered herself much different than the average person.   
  
From a young age, Nancy's life revolved around solving mysteries. Missing wallets, lost pets, strange noises — she could get to the bottom of anything. But her first real mystery had been in Titusville, Illinois, down the road from her hometown of River Heights. The year was 1930.   
  
Nancy had found herself in Titusville searching for the last will and testament of Josiah Crowley. The old man had seemed fairly normal at first, if not a bit senile, but clues led to weirder clues and weirder clues still, and Nancy had found herself face to face with Josiah Crowley, who didn't seem to be dead after all.   
  
"Oh, perfect," he'd snarled, teeth glinting in the moonlight as he grinned. "A tasty treat just for me."   
  
Of course, Nancy was as cunning as she was smart, and she'd managed to escape her shackles and bust her way out of Josiah Crowley's shed, hopping in her blue roadster and fleeing Titusville for good.   
  
But not without two little holes in her neck.   
  
Nancy had watched the bite closely for the next few weeks, hoping that maybe it was nothing, just a bite from a crazy old man. A crazy old man with fangs.   
  
But, eventually, the symptoms had started to set in, and one day Nancy had woken up and seen in her bedroom mirror world's most hunted monster: no reflection at all.   
  
Of course, Nancy was still Nancy, and Nancy did her research. She'd collected stacks upon stacks of dusty old books about vampires and vampire hunters. All of her reading, studying, and thinking led her to one conclusion: she could not get caught.   
  
It seemed that the only thing more dangerous than vampires was being a vampire. Hunters were everywhere, and if Nancy showed any signs, she might as well drive a stake through her heart herself.   
  
She figured out how to hide the symptoms. She shaved down her fangs. She wore lots of makeup. She worked nights at a diner and spent her days sleeping or reading indoors. But there was one symptom Nancy did not know how to cover up: she was eighteen. Forever.

  
Nancy knew she couldn't stay in River Heights much longer. So she decided to follow her passion. Just like her mother, she would travel the world. Because wherever Nancy was, there were mysteries around every corner.   
  
Nancy's twenty-first birthday was her last day in River Heights. No one else knew that she would never be returning, so she had to keep her emotions under control. She couldn't think about how she would never again see her dad, or Hannah, or Bess, or George, or her high school boyfriend Ned. Nancy was on her own now. And she was the only one who knew it.   
  
Nancy left River Heights to solve a mystery in New York, and then she left New York to solve a mystery in Florida, and that's how it was for twelve years. She never stayed in one place for more than a year, and she never let her name come with her. She loved what she did, and she made a decent living doing odd jobs, but there was always that temptation to go back. A part of her wanted to return to River Heights like her dad begged her to, like Hannah and Bess and George begged her to. She had to eliminate that temptation. She had to cut herself off from River Heights. Nancy knew what she had to do.   
  
" _ Dear Carson _ ," she'd written, her hand shaking as she dipped her pen. " _ I regret to inform you that your daughter, Nancy, has passed away _ ." She could never see her father again after this. She could never call him again, hear his voice. This was permanent. But it was what Nancy had to do.    
  
She could never go back to River Heights.   
  
Nancy sealed a lock of her hair in an envelope with the finished letter. That lock wasn't the only part of herself Nancy lost that day.   
  
But things were looking up, the war was over, and Nancy had much of the world left to explore.

  
  
Sometimes, on a case, Nancy longed to call her friends Bess and George or her old boyfriend Ned. She couldn't even make new friends; she would only have to leave them days or weeks later. Nothing in her life could be permanent anymore: her car, her hair, her clothes, her name. Because she knew if she got caught still being eighteen after so many years, it would be over.   
  
On the bright side, Nancy got to be a teenager in every decade. The roaring twenties, the dirty thirties, and so forth. She had fun keeping up with new trends and styles, learning the new slang to help herself fit in.    
  
The frustrating part about being eternally eighteen was dealing with condescending adults. It was always the same things: “You're just a stupid kid. You don't have any life experience. You have some nerve for a teenager."   
  
"I'm older than you," Nancy had wanted to say.   
  
When it came to love, Nancy had come to terms with never settling down. During her first few years of travel, it was nice to have Ned’s comforting voice over the phone, though she could never see him. He was the only consistent thing in her life. After faking her death, Nancy had a fling here and there, but she never let herself get attached.

The first time Nancy messed up was on a cruise ship in the Caribbean Sea. The year was 1988, and she’d teamed up with two undercover teenage detectives, Frank and Joe Hardy, on a case involving the CIA. Joe, the younger one, was a bit of an airhead, but Frank — Frank was something else. 

The way Frank looked at her, the way his eyes crinkled when he laughed, the way his fingers brushed Nancy’s cheek as he tucked her long hair behind her ear — it almost,  _ almost _ made Nancy wish her fate hadn’t been sealed that way.

The next time she was with a guy, she found herself thinking about Frank.

_ Almost _ .

 

With the ‘90s approaching, Nancy was tempted to go back to River Heights as her own secret granddaughter before it was too late. Before everyone she knew was already dead. But fear kept her back. She imagined her father’s smile, his warm embrace when he saw her. She imagined his tears when she told him how much his daughter loved him, what great things she had said about him. But case after case popped up on the map, making it so easy to push aside her feelings. Going back just wouldn’t be safe.

She wondered if her father was even still alive.

 

It seemed like everything Nancy did was motivated by fear. She travelled because she was afraid. She changed her identity because she was afraid. She solved mysteries because she was afraid.

Nancy wondered if there would ever come a time when she wouldn’t be afraid anymore.

She missed her chance to go back to River Heights. Her first time using the Web, the first thing she did is look up her old friends.

Ned was dead. George was dead. Bess was dead. 

Nancy printed each of their obituaries and stuffed them in the secret compartment in her bag where she kept a bag of soil from River Heights.

 

One of the places Nancy wanted to visit most was Hawaii. She finally got the chance in 2006. It wasn’t a glamorous job — something about bugs, she understood — but she was excited to visit one of her dream locations. Though never in her seventy-six years of being eighteen would she have guessed what she would see while headed off to her research site.

It was Frank and Joe Hardy. Tall, handsome, young. Looking seventeen and eighteen, just like when Nancy first met them.

In 1988.

Nancy slammed on the brakes of her rental Jeep, whipping her head around to see the two boys on the beach. Her Jeep swerved off the road, lodging a front tire into a hole in the dirt. Nancy swore under her breath as she hopped out of the Jeep.

“It’s incredible that after seventy-something years I still drive like a teenager,” Nancy muttered, helplessly watching the two boys disappear into the distance.

She tried desperately to get in contact with them over the next few months, but of course two immortal undercover agents would not have an online presence. The more Nancy thought about Frank, the more she thought settling down with a lover might not be so bad after all.

 

Nancy had just turned one hundred when she went to Scotland for the first time. The case file caught her eye because it mentioned Cathedral, which Nancy recognized as the organization her mom worked for. The agency was top secret, so Nancy never had an idea what Kate did besides that her job was dangerous and required her to travel. This would be her chance to learn more about her mother.

The case was promising. Nancy had access to decades of confidential information about Cathedral at her fingertips. Right in front of her was the truth. The story of her mother’s work, her passion, her death. Nancy pressed  _ enter  _ to open the first page of the protected file.

_ IAVH, aka Cathedral _ , it read.  _ Hunting vampires since 1850 _ .

_ Hunting vampires _ .

Her mother was a vampire hunter.

Nancy didn’t look any further. She closed the file and fled the computer lab without looking back. She couldn’t seek the truth about her mother’s untimely death. Nancy knew all she needed to know.

She was the very monster that Kate Drew devoted her life to hunting. She was the very monster her mother died trying to kill.

Nancy left Scotland without a second thought. She wondered how her mother would react if she had known Nancy was a vampire. She wondered if Kate would have spared her daughter’s life, or if Nancy just would have been another tally for her quota. It had been ninety years since Nancy had lost her mom, and Nancy felt like she didn’t know her anymore. Every day her memories faded farther out of reach.

 

Nancy had sworn she would never return to Illinois after leaving her hometown, but an undercover assignment at a liberal arts college in Chicago was too good to pass up. There were plenty of opportunities for cases and other work, and she could even attend some lectures if she had time. She moved into an apartment near campus with a nineteen-year-old criminal justice major, Deirdre Shannon.

Nancy thought moving into a college apartment would be like her assignment a few years earlier in a boarding high school, only with less drama. She was wrong.

Nancy — Bailey, in Chicago — and her roommate didn’t quite get along. Deirdre was a bit snappy, and Nancy didn’t let her get away with it. The two argued constantly, bickering and making digs at each other’s personalities once they got to know each other better. Nancy loved it. Deirdre was the closest thing she’d had to a friend in decades, and the closest thing she’d had to a sibling her whole life. Nancy wasn’t sure if Deirdre appreciated her company as well, but she hoped she did.

Nancy was a fool for missing the signs. She had gotten too careless; she lived in Chicago for three years, longer than she’d lived anywhere since River Heights. She just got too comfortable at the school, solving cases and sneaking into forensics lectures. Nancy got so used to investigating that she managed to miss what was right in front of her face.

Eyerolls turned into prolonged glances, and biting remarks turned into bitten lips. Something changed between Nancy and her roommate, something she couldn’t ignore. She was a fool for letting it get to her.

“I’m so tired of you, Bailey Blue,” Deirdre scoffed one afternoon, leaning against the wall with a cup of tea. “When are you going to move out?”

“Maybe you would have moved out already if you were in any hurry to graduate,” Nancy smirked back. 

“Says the one who’s only taken two classes in three years. And failed one of them.”

“Okay, Deedee; you’ve got me there.” Nancy rested her hand on the wall next to Deirdre’s shoulder, leaning in close to her.

Deirdre rolled her eyes and looked up at her roommate. Her irritated face fell into a content, yet curious expression. She pressed herself close to Nancy, tilting her face up so her lips almost brushed against the taller girl’s. It was in that moment that Nancy realized what a fool she had been.

All the signs she had missed. All the sneaking out at night, that strange bag she carried that Nancy was repulsed by despite not knowing its contents, the rosary in Deirdre’s car despite her claiming not to be religious.

And now, in Deirdre’s pocket, pressed up against Nancy’s hip, a handgun and a small wooden stake.

Deirdre was a hunter. And Nancy was too caught up in her feelings to notice the signs.

“I—I’m sorry,” Nancy stuttered. “I have to go, I...goodbye, Deirdre.”

Nancy pulled away quickly, grabbing her bag and stumbling out the door. She would send someone back to pack up the rest of her things, she decided. She had taken too many risks already.

She was just lucky that Deirdre had missed all the signs as well.

 

Nancy ran out of the building and hailed a cab. She requested the nearest airport, figuring she’d decide where to go once she got there. She could do without her things for now; she just had to get out of Chicago. The first place she’d felt safe since she left Titusville.

Nancy stopped in front of the flight schedule, checking online to see if any departing flights had available seats.

“Hey, Nancy! Nancy!”

Though she hadn’t been called “Nancy” in decades, Nancy looked up from her phone at the sound of her real name. Two familiar teenage boys were running toward her, suitcases in hand.

“Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re here!” Joe exclaimed, out of breath. “We just landed. Apparently Frank saw you while we were in Hawaii, and he would  _ not  _ stop talking about you.”

The older Hardy waved shyly from behind his brother.

“It took me thirteen  _ freaking  _ years, but I finally got Krolmeister to tell me who you are and where you were working. We took the next flight we could to Chicago to find you.”

Nancy grinned, shaking her head. “Oh my God, Joe. You did all that for your brother?”

“For love,” said Joe, turning around and winking at Frank.

Beet red, Frank turned around, trying to hide behind a passport scanner. 

“He’s been eighteen for thirty-five years and he still acts like this,” Joe rolled his eyes.

“I can’t believe I finally have friends like me,” Nancy said, giddy with excitement. “Come on, guys. We have a lot to catch up on.”


End file.
